Taiga

Thrill Jockey; 2007

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It's not saying much that, 13 minutes into a 58-minute album, it feels like things are already over. Indeed, it takes only the first two tracks of OOIOO's fifth album, Taiga, to completely comprehend the record. Everything is readily apparent: These are four dexterous, imaginative musicians playing difficult music. And, if Yoshimi P-We's vocals aren't a giveaway, the colorful and percussive nature of almost everything here should be: This is an album from the same school of Japanese polyglots that gave us Boredoms. Taiga is OOIOO's broadest, busiest, and furthest reaching album to date. Strangely, those same characteristics ruin it.

Once again, consider those first two tracks, "UMA" and "KMS", two cuts obsessed with the difference between on and off. "UMA" is a spree of ecstasy, four minutes of forward charge rattling on tribal drums and Yoshimi's antiphonal cheerleader shouts. At one point, a shrill synthesizer dots the phrases. It gives way to a gym whistle, playing in tune and in time before bleeding into "KMS", a nine-minute, slow-or-speeding dance through rocking-chair bass lines, horn whole notes, fragmented guitar melodies, and cymbal splatters. With two minutes left, the band hits their improvisational stride, and the album reaches its pinnacle: A synthesizer squeals, feeding off of drum rattles and a peak-riding guitar.

But then it all falls to a lazy, closing guitar chord, epitomizing a bold build to absolutely nothing. That's exactly how far Taiga goes: It's like watching someone make a truckload of taffy. Once you know how it's done, it's about combining the core ingredients with different flavors and molding the brew into slightly different shapes. In its current four-piece set-up, OOIOO uses much the same substrate as before: Yoshimi's elastic voice commands the band above a cavalcade of drums, which either drive frenetic Afro-beat passages or ride Sunny Murray-inspired cymbal-and-skin splashes. For flavoring, synthesizers, oscillators, razor-thin guitars, trumpets, electronics, glockenspiel and the occasional gym whistle are the rage.

Taken in small doses, Taigia is still inspired and moving, sweet even: The referents-- Sonic Youth, Don Cherry, Fela Kuti, Patty Waters, Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Neu!-- are so wide-ranging, it's hard not to enjoy it in portions. When they grapple Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime" and pin it to house-music polyrhythms and counterpoint synthesizers on the closing track, it's hard to resist. But, over 58 minutes, you not only watch the taffy get made, you get sick sampling chunks from two-dozen flavors.

This is largely disappointing since OOIOO-- Yoshimi, especially-- has done better. On Gold and Green, recorded in 2000 but not released domestically until last year, the band was capable of excitement and restraint. The same was true of Yoshimi's 2003 collaboration with Yuka Honda, Flower With No Color. And, though it's not proper form to dismiss a side project in favor of its wellspring, Boredoms get something right that OOIOO hasn't mastered: They announce ideas and give them space, building through notions instead of building on top of them. And, while such an aesthetic may not be part of OOIOO's binary, on/off domain, it makes for a better band, or at least a band capable of making records a bit more, well, nourishing.